


Let Go!

by ghoulette13



Series: Boys' Night Universe [6]
Category: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Humor, Past Child Abuse, life after trauma, mentions of CharMacDen, mentions of macdennis, moving on from the bad shit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-26
Updated: 2019-07-26
Packaged: 2020-07-20 12:22:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19992142
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ghoulette13/pseuds/ghoulette13
Summary: Mac helps Charlie move on from his 'childhood rape victim' label. ((FYI:: I'm a CSA Survivor))----------Mac threw his hands up. “He gave you those ‘big eyes’, Charlie , ‘cause you told him that you were a rape victim!”“Well!” Charlie felt his gut turn. He need to fire back with something.   “You told him you were gay! ”Mac immediately calmed and raised his eyebrows. “Okay, that’s different. My identity is not obvious and he needed to know.” Charlie huffed at that. “Being a rape victim is not an identity.”“Oh, yeah? Yeah? ” Charlie dug around in his head, desperate for some kind of backing from somewhere . An image flashed in his mind and he caught it before it could vanish. “Then how come on TV it’ll always show the person’s name and then right after it’ll say ‘RAPE VICTIM’ in giant letters?”





	Let Go!

**Author's Note:**

> AN AU WHERE…. Charlie never bangs the waitress, he heals his childhood trauma, and he spent several years watching Mac and Dennis play ‘sex games’ in a secret event they all called "Boys’ Night." It's a very CharMacDen story.
> 
> FYI:: I'm a CSA Survivor.

It was only two more blocks to the vacant lot and Mac and Charlie were picking up the pace, 6-packs in hand. The street traffic was pretty steady and they were dodging other people left and right. Charlie mimicked Mac’s stride, sneakers tapping the ground lightly as Mac’s boots stomped forward. They were glancing at each other with narrowed eyes, at their feet, at the people on the sidewalk ahead. Mac jumped over a sewer grate and Charlie took two smaller hops to regain his spot alongside him. They hugged the beer cans to their waists, liquid sloshing around inside. Mac nudged Charlie with his shoulder and Charlie countered with a nudge of his own.

Their steps grew faster.

One more block and Mac started sprinting ahead. Charlie reached out, fingers barely grazing Mac’s shirt. He zig-zagged through obstacles with wide strides, practically leaping through the crowd and across the concrete. Charlie’s lungs weren’t up for it and his footprints turned into tumbles. Mac hit the last street corner with both feet pounding pavement.

“Suck it, bitch!” Mac yelled.

Charlie was coughing and lagged behind by about twenty feet. “ _Dude!_ ” He choked out, stumbling forward. “Not fair!” He took a few heaving breaths before finally standing upright, only to be greeted by Mac’s smug face. His steps were shaky and slow as he tried to get the air back in his chest. “You know I can’t breathe, asshole!”

Mac laughed. “Whatever, you lost.”

Charlie didn’t have the energy to tackle him, though he wanted to. He shoved himself into Mac’s side when he finally closed the distance between them.

They turned the corner only to be shocked by the view. 

The lot was gone. 

The vacant lot full of years of drinking and talking was gone. 

No more empty pad of asphalt with rusty debris and trash piles. No more oil stains and water puddles. Instead, there was a large metal fence with plywood walls surrounding the perimeter.

“What the hell?” Mac shouted. This was their _lot._ This was where they _went_ . This was what they _did._

“What is this?” Charlie looked on the fence. There was a giant placard with a drawing of an apartment building with words written in large blocky letters. “Construction site and future home of…” Charlie squinted. “Taft Plaza?” _Like Ruby Taft?_ His gut sank. _I was such an asshole._

Mac gave a small smile. “Nice, dude.”

A sparkling heat rose to Charlie’s face. He glanced around at the people walking by, but no one was paying them any mind. He kept his voice down but his chin up. “Whatever.” He tapped the other man with his elbow. 

Mac ignored him and started scoping the place out, looking for any side entrances. “We gotta get _in_ there.” Walls didn’t mean _shit_ to Mac. The gang _owned_ this plot. They'd been coming to it since forever. Charlie was right there with him, looking for a way they could break in.

 _There._

Along the western wall there was a hole. Looked like some car had smashed into the fence and there was a big enough gap for them to squeeze through, one at a time. They tenderly slipped in the six packs before busting through themselves. A couple of people on the sidewalk merely glanced as they past the two grown men crawling on the ground, twisting their bodies through the barrier, trying to keep their clothes from getting caught on the broken chain links.

“I can’t believe these assholes just took over our _lot!_ ” Mac shouted once inside. He pulled Charlie up from the ground and they took a moment to brush the dirt from their clothes. Building supplies and scrap littered the interior. There were piles of metal pipes and coiled cables. There was also a huge stack of spray paint cans. Mac stopped when he saw them and turned to Charlie. 

Charlie looked over and shrugged. “I'm good, man.” It had been weeks since he last even _tried_ to huff something. One sniff and he got a two-day bed-ridden migraine.

Mac pulled out the long-range walkie-talkie and turned it on. The other pair of the walkie-talkies was set up right next to Mac’s home stereo and they were immediately met with the muffled sounds of the Q102 radio station.

“Alright, let’s get these beers going,” said Charlie, peeling one out of its plastic ring.

Mac grabbed one for himself. “You know, I gotta stop drinking beer, dude. It’s totally messing with this new work-out routine I’m doing--”

“Oh wow, cool,” Charlie feigned, already exhausted by Mac’s body-talk. Like he didn’t have enough body issues of his own to deal with. “Hey, so uh, where do you wanna do this?”

“Oh! Uh…” Mac started to look around the site. It was still a concrete skeleton at this point: no wires, windows, or doors. “Well, we were supposed to do it in that oil puddle that was next to that half a shopping cart …” He tried to remember what the lot looked like before. There had been so many bits and pieces that never seemed to move--just steadily devolving into the asphalt beneath it. He pounded back a few heavy gulps of his drink. He tried to measure out his steps from the fence to where the oil spot had once been. “I’m thinking... here?”

Charlie nodded and downed his first beer. He belched loudly before smashing the can under his foot and throwing it over to where Mac stood. “You got the picture?”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Mac replied and pulled the photo from his pants pocket. He laid it on the ground next to Charlie’s empty beer. It was a small, black & white headshot of Dennis, back when he was considering a modelling career. 

“Should we, like, say a few words or something?” asked Charlie as he popped open his second drink.

“Uh… yeah!” Mac dug around in his pocket.

Charlie shrugged and shuffled his feet waiting for the other man to start.

Mac held up a piece of paper in both hands. “Dear Dennis,” he cleared his throat. “Fuck you, you fucking piece of shit.” He crumpled the paper and dropped it on the ground next to his photo. “Charlie?” he said, with his palm out, offering the floor to the other man.

“Dear Dennis,” he began. “You’re probably wondering how you got here--”

“Ehhhh,” Mac cut him off. “Let’s not do that one. I’m saving that for something else.”

“Well, dude,” Charlie scoffed. “You can still use it somewhere else.” He pointed at the photo on the ground. “Lemme use it here.”

“Yeah, but then it won’t be as good when _I_ use it.” He put his hand to his chest. “It’ll be like I’m just copying you.”

“Well, you _are_ copying me ‘cause I wanna use it _here._ ”

“But it doesn’t even make _sense_ because he’s not really even _here!_ It’s just a _picture!_ ”

“So? Maybe… uhhh…” Charlie bobbed his head back and forth trying to come up with a supporting argument. “Maybe his spirit is like… in the photo and he’s listening to us or something.”

Mac groaned. “Dude, come on.”

Charlie rolled his eyes. He hadn’t been that dedicated to the set-up anyway. “Whatever, man. Lemme just think for a second.” He closed his eyes and let his mind wander a bit. He drank a few sips of beer. 

Nope. 

Nothing.

Blank.

“Uh…,” Charlie croaked. “Fuck you, Dennis. May you rest in goddamn pieces.”

“May you rest in goddamn pieces,” Mac parroted with a nod.

Charlie chugged the rest of his beer and crushed the can flatly into the concrete. He added it to the ‘memorial’ and tried to be as patient as possible while Mac, quite slowly, finished his first can. He repeated Charlie’s actions and they silently began to make a wreath of crinkled cans around Dennis’ portrait. 

It was all performative at this point and they knew it, but there was a certain satisfaction in the _ceremony_ of it. A certain sense of _spoken_ _closure._

“You good?” Mac finally broke their lull, one hand on the button of his pants.

Charlie nodded. “Heh, yeah, man.”

They both whipped out their dicks and pissed on the photo, leaving an obnoxious yellow pool with trails spreading outward beyond the cans. They repacked themselves. 

Mac spoke first. “We’re done with this Dennis-shit, yeah?” The man had been wedged between them for a while. An absence that left them angry and confused. And they responded by taking turns wearing his shoes, playing his role, working him out of their system. 

“Yeah, man,” Charlie responded with a smile and stuck out his hand. “We’re good.”

Mac grabbed the other man’s hand and pulled him in for a quick hug. They murmured out ‘I’m sorry’s before letting go of each other and letting go of Dennis.

A pair of heavy sighs huffed from their noses.

They went back to exploring the construction site.

Mac picked up one of the shorter, thicker pipes from the ground. An idea already sparking in his mind. “ _Dude!_ Let’s _plow_ this bitch!”

Charlie scoffed. “Oh, I’m all about that, man.” He straightened his posture, chin in the air. “But you know, as a childhood rape victim, I find that phrasing very violent. Very violent, indeed.” 

“Dude. That’s not--that’s not even--” Mac sighed and closed his eyes, unsure how to respond. _Again with the rape victim shit?_ It was turning into a daily issue and Mac couldn’t keep listening to it. Nearly every conversation included Charlie providing ‘as a rape victim’ to make his point. _Regardless of the goddamn topic_ . Charlie had been doing so well. The guy _hated_ labels but he was stuck on this singular image of himself. And here was the opportunity to squash it, dangling in front of Mac’s face. He had to get the other man to see what he was doing. “Speaking of, Charlie,” Mac steeled himself and tried to remain as calm as possible. “You have _got_ to stop telling random people that you were raped.”

Charlie’s brows squeezed together. “Hey! Tons of us got raped when we were kids! People need to know that this shit is _happening!_ ” He pointed his finger at Mac.

Mac held up his palms, wishing he could just grab Charlie by the shoulders. “These people are just trying to live their lives--” 

“People _need to know_ that there are lifelong consequences to raping kids--” 

“That dude the other day was just _bagging_ our _groceries!_ ” 

“--and guess what, buddy?” He pointed to himself with his thumbs, eyes nearly popping from his skull. “You’re lookin’ at those consequences _right here!_ ” Charlie stared off beyond Mac, beyond the site’s walls, beyond all of Philly to a darkened room with a small wooden table in the center. “I saw the look in his eye,” he said aloud. One bright lamp hung down, casting dark shadows over the sinister gaze of a robed figure, seated, toying with a spyglass. They twisted it in their hand, collapsing the barlow all the way down. “He saw my past like it was written on my face.” His voice was gravelled and deep. “He saw the _torture_... the _suffering_... the cycle of self-de _struction_ that created _this_.” The figure at the table pointed the spyglass toward their chest. “He saw it all and _he judged me for it_.” A scoff. “Like I was some kind of _dirt_ on the street. Like I was _scum_ between his _toes_ ready to be flicked into oblivion. ” He chuckled humorlessly. “I wasn’t going to just sit there and _take_ it. You can’t beat _this_ _dog_. Because _this dog_ bites the hand that feeds him. _This dog_ bites all.” Charlie’s eyes were wide, hypnotized.

“Fucking _hell_ , Charlie!” Mac was teetering the line between strangling him and begging him. “He was _bagging_ our _groceries_!”

Charlie snapped back to the present, feeling Mac’s anger jumping out at him. “You don’t know that!”

“Yes, I do! I was right there!” He shouted.

Charlie groaned. “He was giving me that _look_ , you know? With those big eyes! I had to defend myself!” _I’m not these scars!_ He had wanted to say. _I’m not that pain anymore!_ “I had to let him know that ‘Hey! I may not look good right now, but I’m getting better every _goddamn_ day of the week!’”

Mac threw his hands up. “He gave you those ‘big eyes’, _Charlie_ , ‘cause you told him that you were a rape victim!” 

“Well!” Charlie felt his gut turn. He need to fire back with _something._ “You told him you were _gay!_ ”

Mac immediately calmed and raised his eyebrows. “Okay, that’s different. My identity is not obvious and he needed to know.” Charlie huffed at that. “Being a rape victim is not an identity.”

“Oh, yeah? _Yeah?_ ” Charlie dug around in his head, desperate for some kind of backing from _somewhere_. An image flashed in his mind and he caught it before it could vanish. “Then how come on TV it’ll always show the person’s name and then right after it’ll say ‘RAPE VICTIM’ in giant letters?”

Mac searched his mind for whatever the hell Charlie got this from. “Dude, that is a _very_ specific context. They’re explaining how that person relates to the-the-the--” Mac shook his head and squinted. “--news or court case or whatever. That’s not _who_ they are! They’re not walking around with a sign that says ‘RAPE VICTIM’. They're a human being!”

Charlie held onto Mac’s last words. “That’s the _whole point!_ People need to know what we look like!” Charlie was waving his arms in the air. “We’re everywhere and we don’t appreciate being judged by you _non-raped gifts_ to the world!”

“Dude! He wasn’t _judging_ you. He was just _bagging_ our _groceries_.” Mac was reaching out with his fingers squeezing inward. 

Charlie waved his hand out dismissively. “I knew what he was thinking. I could see it--”

“You are not a mindreader, dude! You were just making that shit up in your head!” Mac wanted to grab Charlie and throw him up against the fence. 

Charlie just stared at him with flared nostrils. He couldn’t surrender. His fight muscles were a lot stronger and much easier to flex. “I suffer every _goddamn_ day--”

“ _Why?_ ” Mac begged. “ _Why_ are you doing this to yourself?” He shook his head in disbelief. 

“I am in _pain!_ ” And suddenly a twist burned in his chest, his body conjuring the feeling to match the word. The feeling he thought he had moved past but had only been shoving _deep back down._

“But no one is hurting you!” Mac said with his arms out wide. “Look around, dude!”

Charlie glanced around the site. The thick, gray concrete columns. The shiny metal piping. The golden beige plywood tied to the chain-link fence. He put his hand to his sternum. “B-b-but I _feel_ it--”

“You’re doing it to _yourself_ , man.” Mac spoke softly. He had done it to himself, too. So many years of self-inflicted misery. But he was coming out the other side and he had to bring Charlie with him. Even if he tried to kick and scream. Charlie was the one who had started this new spiral anyway, by going to therapy. He had broken the circle and branched outward. Gone full Fibonacci rather than steady ol’ pi. Mac had been watching him _change_ and _shift_ and there was something _stronger_ beneath his feet and something _stronger_ in his gait and... 

_There._

Mac moved closer and took a deep breath. A quick, wordless prayer crossed his lips and the usual static of his mind emptied. “Look, dude. I know you’re hurting and I know every day is a struggle.” Another deep breath. “But it doesn’t _have_ to be. You’re letting this weight be heavier than it needs to be.” Charlie only looked more confused. “I _mean_ it when I tell you that you’re the strongest person I know. I _mean_ it when I tell you that you’re a fucking heavyweight champion.” Charlie’s eyes began to well. “I _mean_ it when I tell you to keep going and-and-and keep living... and keep growing.” 

Charlie felt trapped and hypnotized and pained and _loved_ all at once. He stared at Mac and ground his teeth. 

Mac didn’t stop. “You’re not a _victim_ , dude. You’re a _survivor._ That’s what you _really_ are.” He threw his hand out. “And there’s _so_ many more years ahead.” For both of them. “There’s so much _more_ than that pain, dude. There’s like… life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

“I can’t ignore it!” The other man stuttered out. “I can’t just ignore this _thing_ that hurts!” This _thing_ that felt so deep.

“Well, what’s left, man?” Mac asked. “You’ve been saying that you’re not that kid anymore. You’ve been saying that you’re changing and you’re getting your shit together.”

Charlie nodded and took a few deep, heavy breaths.

“So, what’s left?” He repeated. “What’s the last _bit?_ ” The last of the wound in his chest.

“I just… I feel like I need to be _doing_ something, you know?” 

“Like what?”

“Like… I gotta stop it from happening to other people. But I’m not like some superhero or whatever. I can’t like, fucking, _smell_ rape on the horizon or some stupid shit like that, you know what I mean? Sometimes I feel like I can’t do a _goddamn thing_ and all these people keep coming out on the news--”

“I know! Isn’t it great?”

“What the _fuck?_ How is that _great?_ That’s _pain_ , asshole!”

“But it’s not being hidden anymore!”

Charlie stared at him with a huge grimace on his face. “What the fuck does _that_ mean? How does that make it _any_ better?”

Mac threw his arms out wide. “Be _cause_ , dude! Now everybody’s figuring out that they’re not _alone!_ ”

Charlie jerked his neck back in thought.

“Everybody out there is getting raped and raping and shit.” Mac said. “Some of my first dates were fuckin’ _disasters_ ‘cause of all that shit me and Dennis were doing.” His eyes grew wide. “Guys had to shove me off and then I had to sit there for like... a fuckin _hour_ and listen to them _lecture_ me.” He rolled his eyes, exasperated by his own past bullshitty self. His mind flashed a series of faces and one in particular caught his attention. “Well… I think that guy, Tristan, kind of _got_ me, you know?” He shrugged. “But the head wasn’t that great.” Mac grimaced before blinking back to the original topic of discussion. “Anyway, dude. You just gotta go out there and do your thing, man. You’re an _artist_ , remember? Make your _art_ and shit.” He pulled his shoulders back. “Just like the first amendment of the constitution says--” He punctuated his next words with the jab of his finger. “You. Do. You.”

Charlie bit back a smile, face still a little red. “I don’t know, man. I had to stop _doing_ all that shit for a while.” The division of fantasy and reality, the boundaries of truths and lies--they had mixed and blurred and melted for so many years and so many highs. The only way for him to find the real shit was to block out all the fake shit. He spent weeks, medicated, staring at the walls between his therapy sessions. At that point in his recovery, it was better to think _nothing_ than _something._

“But you’re doing so _good_ now, dude!” Mac beamed again. “Think about it!” He tapped his temple before dropping his cheery demeanor. He adopted fallen shoulders and a high, nonchalant turn of his chin. “I mean, uhh… me and you _are_ bangin’.”

Charlie barked out a laugh. “Yeah, and that’s progress?”

“Hell yeah, it’s progress!” Mac shouted with a grin. “ _Years_ , dude! You went _years_ watching me and Dennis and never made a move!”

Heat rose to Charlie’s face. The invitation had always been presented. And he had never been ready. Too focused on his fantasy of the Waitress. Too focused on what _could be_ instead of what was _there_. Mac was right. “Alright, alright.” He looked down to his feet. “Maybe I could do some paintings or something.”

Mac beamed. “We could do a whole show at the bar!” Charlie gave him a quick, angry look. “We’ll do it _right_ this time! I promise!” He held his palm up.

“I don’t know, man.” Charlie’s mouth pulled flat. “Some of my old shit was just silly or just, you know, working the bad shit outta my head.”

“But you got _good_ shit now!” Mac encouraged. “When was the last time you listened to your tapes?” 

When Charlie finally had enough sober days and started seeing a therapist, he had to tape his sessions and make notes. It helped him remember the ‘right’ things, the ‘said’ things, the ‘out-in-the-open’ things. He had gotten so good at blocking stuff out over the years (emotions, memories, trains of thought), that he could do it with unrecognizable efficiency. 

“It’s been a little while,” Charlie answered with a shrug. Last time he tried, he barely recognized his own voice. As if another man had been sitting there and speaking his story. 

“Dude! You _gotta_ go back and listen!” Mac grinned. “I listened to one the other day--”

“What? Why?” Sure, Charlie had told him he could and sometimes they listened to them together. But that was months ago.

“Well, the guy said some good shit.” Mac smirked as Charlie nodded in agreement. “But the one I listened to was, like, _right_ after Dennis left.” He chuckled to himself. “Dude, you just… you gotta go back and listen.” He pointed to their pathetic, piss-covered shrine. “That’s progress, too.”

Charlie took a deep breath. Progress. Change. Growth. All these words he had spent so long misinterpreting. He remembered the first time he had shared his story with Mac. The _real_ ‘Uncle Jack Story’. It felt so far in the past at this point and he couldn’t remember exactly what he had said, but he remembered how Mac had made him feel. Easy. Strong. Capable. There was no misinterpretation there because he once again felt those words in Mac’s presence.

Easy.

Strong.

Capable.

There was a firmness in his gut, expanding out his diaphragm and pushing up his chest. He could do this. He could keep it up. And he wasn’t alone. 

“Alright, alright. I'm a _survivor._ ” Charlie smiled. “I’m moving on, you piece o’ shit.”

Mac sighed and smiled right back. “ _Kickass_ , man.” He walked back towards Charlie. “We’ll keep you distracted next time we go out. Like, we can just play supermarket sweep or whatever.”

Charlie’s mind happily switched gears. “Oh shit! We haven’t done that in forever, dude! That was so much fun!” 

“Yeah it was, wasn’t it?” Mac nodded, smiling about old times. “Why’d we stop anyway?”

“Because Frank got that old lady sent to the hospital.” And yet some memories could spring up without issue….

“Right, right, right.” Mac nodded. “But I mean, what’s the likelihood of that even happening again?”

“Oh, like a billion to one!”

“For sure!” He picked the pipe back up and tossed it to Charlie. “Here, let’s see how much of this ‘plaza’ we can ‘smash’, is that better?”

Charlie nodded and rolled his eyes.

**Author's Note:**

> A huge thank you to fellow writer [AnthraxValentines](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnthraxValentines/pseuds/AnthraxValentines) for assisting me with this one. <3
> 
> Comments keep me going! Even if it's just one word!
> 
> \---hit me up if I'm missing any pertinent tags, please. :)


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